Altogether,
I spent about 60 hours (more or less) and usually played in a team of three. We
completed every main and side mission, and also maxed out the headquarters. I’m
not going to collect all the random pickup doodads, but I will come back for
the DLC after giving it a little rest.

Over the course
of playing the game, we dipped into the game’s online quasi-PVP called “The Dark Zone”
a few times -- nothing too frequent, but we had some good runs. Sometimes we’d
get some good loot, sometimes we’d lose it to other players, but overall I felt
like it was a great idea and a neat twist on the usual PVP offerings.

We went back
in today and had what is, hands-down, the worst
experience I've had in The Division,
and probably one of the worst online experiences I've ever had.

When we
first entered the DZ, we were approached by another player. We were having
headset difficulties at the time and none of us could hear each other very
well, so we didn't think too much of it. After the connection improved, we
started catching bits and pieces of this guy talking, and it was along the
lines of "Let me join your group or I'll kill you".

Obviously, this is not the proper way to approach other players if you want to work together, and
since he seemed like he had a screw loose, we moved on and ignored him.

The thing
is, he did not ignore us.

He started
following behind us silently, and I thought he'd eventually get bored and buzz
off. However, he persisted. Once my team started taking down AI characters and
accumulating some loot, he opened fire on us from behind and took all three of
us out before we could do anything.

We
immediately respawned and ran back to the scene of the crime, and he was still
there.

I figured
that the three of us would open up on him and get our stuff back, but even with
three of us firing at him in unison and giving him everything we had, we barely scratched him. He took the whole team down a couple more
times without breaking a sweat. While he was doing it, he kept saying "You should have let me join your group." and "I
thought we could be friends."

After repeatedly
getting killed by this guy, we decided to bounce and go to a different zone,
but he kept following us wouldn't leave us alone. Even after we completely left
the DZ and came back, he still found
us and wouldn’t stop tailing our group. The whole time it was the same M.O. -- he'd
follow us and not do anything until we collected some loot, and then he'd kill
us in a matter of seconds and take our stuff.

Don’t’ get
me wrong here -- the problem is not that somebody in the Dark Zone killed and
robbed us (it’s been clearly stated since before The Division‘s launch that this was part of the online) but the
problem is that it’s absurd for one player to be able to steamroll a team of
three with impunity, and then keep on doing it, effectively preventing us from
doing anything in the DZ.

In The Souls series (another game with unusual online
PVP) things are different. After getting beaten by someone, that person returns
to their world and it's just luck of the draw if you ever see them again. Unless
the servers are deserted, you probably won’t. I certainly don't mind getting
beaten by someone who's better than me or who has better gear, but being beaten
by someone and going your separate ways is not the
same as being killed by someone and then having them follow you during every
minute of your playtime to kill you over and over and over again.

Another
difference is that there’s no talking in Souls.
No matter how cheesy or awful someone might be, the devs don’t make you listen
to their taunting or verbal abuse. In The
Division, we went to PSN party chat to avoid hearing randos talk in the DZ,
but we could still hear this guy talking (environmentally) when he was close to
us. Thankfully there are options in the menu which prevent verbal communication with other players, so as soon as we stopped playing, I shut all that stuff off. It's going to stay off.

This
experience was incredibly frustrating and discouraging, and is by far the worst
time we’ve had with the game overall. Ubisoft definitely needs to address a few
things in order to improve things here because there are always going to be
people who want to be the biggest fish in a small pond, and if someone like
that can be an active barrier to the gameplay of others, then action needs to be
taken.

For
starters, let’s talk about the balance. Prior to becoming level 30, the DZ is
sectioned off to players in certain segments. Levels 1-5 play in one zone, levels
5-10 play in another, and so forth. My team were all level 30. The guy harassing us was
also level 30. In The Division it’s
possible to find or craft gear that improves individual stats regardless of
level, and I’m guessing this is how he was crushing us – on paper we seemed
like equals, but in practice this was clearly not the case. It seems like
assigning point values to players based on their gear might prevent the sort of
one-sided domination we saw here. People who grind for days to get the best
gear should be matched against people who are doing the same.

Going
further, despite the everybody-for-themselves nature of the DZ, I’d say this
guy’s behavior was straight-up harassment. It's one thing to take a headshot in
PVP or lose a match here and there, but it's something else altogether to have
someone watching over your shoulder the entire time you're playing, arbitrarily stopping your progress and verbally taunting you.

In
situations like this, I’d like to see some sort of system to let me avoid being
instanced with an abusive person – if I tag them as being a harasser, let the
servers put us in different games. There's a similar system in the phenomenal Helldivers. You can down-vote a player who's a jerk, and the game will then take steps to avoid bringing you two together, which is brilliant.If Ubisoft can't do that, then at the very least there
should be some sort of reporting system. I know it might be hard to implement
since anyone who gets their stuff stolen might want to ‘report’ the thief as a
knee-jerk reaction, but I felt like this went way beyond gameplay and became full-on
harassment.

If Ubisoft
wants The Division to have a robust
player base and become a persistent online platform, they’re going to have to
take steps to stop people like the guy we met tonight from dominating the
online component. If there’s nobody in the DZ except nigh-invulnerable creepers
who get off on actively interfering with others, then they can kiss any dreams
of long-term success goodbye despite everything The Division gets right, and it gets a lot right. Seeing all of that hard work go down the drain thanks
to people abusing the system would be a real shame, but I’ve gotta be honest –
after a session like tonight, I’m pretty reluctant to ever go back into the
Dark Zone again.

First off, I
want to say that although it was really inconvenient for review purposes, I do think
it was a good idea for Ubisoft to hold all review copies back until launch day.

The Division
is not playable without an online connection, and either there was no way to
turn on the servers early for critics, or perhaps someone at Ubi didn't think
that early access would give an accurate impression without the expected number
of users online. Either way, I think they made the right call in this instance.

Personally,
I'm a big believer in not reviewing a game with significant online components until
it's open to the public… Sometimes games can look or feel very different when there are only 100 writers playing, as opposed
to 100,000 people who paid $60. (Let’s not forget about day-one patches as
well.)

I know a lot
of writers are still locked into the “have to be first, have to publish on day
one” mentality but I think that's becoming less of an option these days. If nothing
else, reviewers owe it to their readers to give the most accurate and thorough
impressions possible, and that's just not a thing we can even do without access to the full game in an
environment that matches what paying customers will get.

So, what
about the game itself? I'm about nine hours in at this point, and I have to
say, I really, really like it.

The Division
is a third person, real-time cover-based shooter with heavy multiplayer integration
and progression elements, but it's entirely possible to go through the game by
yourself -- although that's not the ideal way to do it.

Basically,
you create a character and jump into a New York that’s been devastated by a
virus. Lawless gangs have taken over, and you are one of the few people trying
to keep order. Although there are named characters and NPCs, this is not a
story-heavy experience… Basically the plot is "take back New York"
and I haven’t yet seen much more than that. If you're looking for a very
story-rich, character-driven experience, The Division is not that.

After
starting, it's pretty overwhelming at first… There are a lot of menus and a lot
of stuff going on, and although the tutorials do a fairly decent job of
explaining things, there are inevitably a lot of questions that will only
become clear after experimentation. That said, I figured things out pretty
quickly, and it seems like a good system.

The player’s
home base is a hub that has three areas: Tech, Medical, and Security. Each one has
their own questline, and completing these quests unlocks upgrades and abilities
for your character. Resources are also needed to earn some of these upgrades,
and missions out in the world will award these necessary things.

New York is
a totally open world and the player is free to go wherever they wish, although
the map clearly shows that some zones are recommended for certain levels. The
zone around home base is for players level 0-4, the next zone is for levels
5-8, and the furthest parts of the map are for levels 18 and up, and so on. You
can go in there if you like, but you're probably going to get your ass shot off
in short order.

Getting back
to the quests for a moment, they're roughly divided into three sizes -- the
story quests are the biggest, there are side missions which are kind of
middle-size, and then there are encounters, which are small-scale. Players can
look at these and decide what kind of experience they want for the time that
they have, and self-regulate.

So far, the
multiplayer has been excellent. It's really easy to find friends and to join
them, or to invite them to join you. It's also easy to meet randoms and join up.
I haven't done any of the PVP stuff yet, but it’s important to note that PVP is
limited to The Dark Zone, a very clearly marked and separate location on the map.
Players who don’t want to participate in PVP 100% don’t have to. It is purely optional.

However, I
have done a lot of co-op, and it’s great. The thing I'm most impressed with is
the difficulty scaling -- I did one specific mission by myself and it was a
cakewalk, I did it with one other player and I noticed a ramp-up (but wasn't
too hard) and then I played the same mission again with four people and it was
quite a bit tougher, this time requiring team tactics, supporting each other,
and making sure we all had each other’s back. Although it was the same mission
all three times, it felt very
different playing it with different numbers of people, and so far it feels like
the difficulty scaling is right on.

As far as
the gear goes, enemies will drop stuff as a player makes their way through the
world… There are a whole slew of armor pieces, some cosmetic pieces, and of
course, weapons.

Although
it's not entirely based on reality, The Division certainly skews towards
realism, and in that respect (so far anyway) I haven't found any gear that
seems really crazy or anything that doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of the
world. Apparently the best stuff is kept in the PVP zone, but the quality of drops
ramp up as the player goes on, and I'm constantly finding new things to use
while not being overwhelmed with stuff to trash or sell back at base. I feel like
the loot drop rate is quite nice, although I will say that I certainly wouldn't
mind a few more exotic things. However, I'm pretty early in the game and there
is a lot left to see…

Considering that the player has access to some
science-fiction equipment (a portable healing zone generator, a spider drone
with a gun, etc.) I wouldn't be at all surprised to see some more fantastical
stuff show up later on.

I've said
this before but the best way of summing up what The Division feels like is to
say that it gives me the experience that I wanted from Destiny, before I knew
what Destiny was actually like.

It's great
to be out in the world and feels like you're really a part of something, and
the missions are quite varied… I'm not doing the same strike over and over, and
New York is far bigger than one small hub. There are large chunks I haven't
even seen yet, and I like that there are little surprises in each mission that
keep the play feeling fresh.

I'm not an
MMO guy in general, but this game has enough action to keep me in, and the
ability to solo anytime is really appealing to me, plus the feeling of being in
this world and fighting with purpose is a great spin. The Division is
definitely in the same general ballpark as Destiny is (as far as I’m concerned)
but it's hitting different notes and it has a very different feel. It’s
clicking for me.

There is a
lot of The Division left to see and although I'm not sure I will be able to
complete it before I turn in a review, I feel like I need to put at least another
10 or 15 hours in before I’ll have a good measure of what's going on. That
said, I really like what the devs have created here and I'm playing every
chance I get, which isn't something I can say about every review assignment.

So far it's
an unequivocal thumbs up, but look for my full review in the future.